Burp

Hey. There was supposed to be a post here about the fiasco we had switching over to wireless on a stressful, unproductive Saturday. I remember seeing it here the last two days. Oh well, I guess Blogger ate it…

The Day Of Mixed Anxieties

The distress however, belongs almost entirely to the Wife, not me.

For the most part, I thought my day was going to be pretty run of the mill. I was just going to work on the Bioware submission a bit more, then go off to a little seminar about Copyright and Intellectual Property Law as it pertains to Massively Multiplayer Online Roleplaying Games, and then go home and work a bit more. It sort of went half that way, anyhow.

In the morning, I got a little bit of work done, and then the Wife enacted her new decision to move her computer from end of the room to the other. This seemed like a relatively straightforward proposition until she hooked everything up and got it running, at which point, the router that controlled our mutual access to the Internet, promptly refused to work. No matter what she did, Internet access was dead. Time was counting down and she had another appointment to get to–she wanted to bring a Mac she had recently acquired over to her Uncle’s to trade it in for a Mac Powerbook–and so I went with her to dutifully lug said Mac around.

Then I went over to the lecture, which was not, I state now, my idea, but the assignment from the editors at GameAxis.

It was kind of interesting in that most of the people there were either lawyers or people with the Economic Development Board, or the Infocomm Authority, and not a single one of them had the faintest clue of what was happening in the realm of MMOs, or just how crazy the legal wrangling is getting there. It’s the damn Wild West frontier all over again, with all kinds of cases going to court that have no precedents, and what amazed me was that while they obviously knew their law very well, they were almost dumbfounded with amazement to hear about things like the infamous “Jedi for sale” fiasco that plagued Star Wars Galaxies, or the millions of US dollars transacted on E-Bay for virtual goods, or the hands off approach game developers have taken to Seconed Life.

All of these things, I might add, had to be brought up by ME, the most unlikely person in the entire room, since everyone was wearing business shirts, shoes and jackets, and I was sitting there with my birkenstocks, “Lone Wolf” T-shirt, and a Nintendo DS with Kingdom Hearts: Chain of Memories to pass the time. I think I short circuited a few brains when I talked about the Jedi thing, since even the speaker hadn’t known about that.

Towards the end, there were case studies that were given which resulted in the entire room being broken up into four discussion groups to debate the merits and ramifications of each case. They were supposed to be hypothetical, but I recognized one of them as a thinly disguised scenario of what happened between NCSoft, creators of the Superhero MMO City of Heroes and Marvel when Marvel sued NCSoft because the game players were infringing on Marvel copyright by creating their own version of Spiderman and Wolverine within the game. I told my group, “This is the NCSoft/Marvel case,” and when I explained it to them, the speaker ended up asking me to explain the entire case and its unsatisfying real world result (An out of court settlement, thus avoiding the burden of having to establish the first legal precedent).

After I spilled the beans on it, I think I got a whole lotta’ credibility from the people in the room for A) Not speaking with a Singaporean accent, and B) making it abundantly clear that I knew exactly what I was talking about. A couple of people even asked me what company I was with, and when I said “GameAxis” they wanted to know which games they made, which confused me until they explained that from the way I discussed the industry, they thought I was a developer. And I got a bunch of people asking me for my card, to which I replied, “I’m just a cog in the machine, man, don’t look at me, I’m only the writer, you wanna’ talk about this stuff, talk to my editors, they’re the brains, I just do what they tell me.” The scariest one was when the lawyer in my group asked me if it would be all right to occasionally contact me for consultation with her clients on the dynamics of the game industry which flipped me out, and I again referred her to the office. This is Not My Scene…

After that, I found out that the Wife was over at the Geek Mall, Funan Center, having spent the last few hours getting a tech-head at the shop to look over the router and finally say, “Yup, it’s broken. That’ll be $80, please.”

In the end, we didn’t get out of Funan until sometime close to 9:00 pm, because she went to another place, asked them to help get the router/internet situation fixed, and they reccomended a new router/modem combination. The Wife at this point was in the “Fine, I’ll pay whatever you want, just please, please, PLEASE make this problem go away…” and so he obliged her by offering the configure the new doohickey to work using my laptop (She’d brought it with her to get a new battery for it) and promptly spent a couple of hours being unable to do so. At which point he advised, “Maybe you’d better not buy this, since I can’t actually get it to work…”

So, the end result was an incredibly frustrated Wife (who has sanctioned the purchase of a pack of cigarettes for HER stress) and only one computer at a time allowed access to the internet.

Right. Off to bash more demons in Digital Devil Saga 2, then go to bed. Hopefully tomorrow will be a little calmer and I’ll actually be able to get more work done on the Bioware submission and start writing up my article on the Intellectual Property seminar, carefully leaving out all the stuff about being asked for my business card and offers to be a consultant.

Man. TOO freaky…

The New Routine & More Kingdom Hearts

Today marks the start of the new way the Wife and I will be doing our usual routines. It’s a Thursday, which means that my part-time stint at GameAxis is over for the week, and today was the first day of the Wife’s new status as happily unemployed. To celebrate, some paintings the Wife did a while back were brought over to the nearby Frame Shop. It’s a place that we’ve passed by on an almost daily basis since we moved here. It’s enroute to the train station and has a huge banner up proclaiming it to be Singapore’s first online Frame Shop. Ironically, we have yet to actually look it up online and only went in since it’s just around the corner. A new tablet was also purchased by the Wife, and so was some canvas and acrylic. It looks like she’s getting ready to go all out and get back into some serious digital and analog painting. While all this was happening, when I wasn’t being a good spouse and just carrying all the stuff that was purchased, I was plugged into my Nintendo DS playing with my newly acquired toy, just got it last night, which was this:

To be perfectly honest, I’m not entirely thrilled with the actual play mechanics of the game itself. For whatever reason, it’s got the play-style of the original Kingdom Hearts, meaning you jump around with a Big Ass Key and slash things with it, but they’ve tacked on a Magic: The Gathering style card system.

In theory, what this means is that you rush your opponent, see that he has an attack card labeled “5″ thus clueing you into the fact that you should shuffle your deck to 6 or better, and then, when you hit the attack button, you swing your keyblade, the game checks to see who has the higher card, and if yours is higher, you win and do damage.

In reality, all this means is you keep bashing something repeatedly (Since your deck automatically shuffles itself for you) until you start doing damage since it’s simply faster to ignore the cards altogether and just keep hitting until you do damage. I can see why they tried adding it in, but it’s a pointless complication that doesn’t really enhance the gameplay in any appreciable way.

In fact, the ONLY reason I’m even playing this is because when I finally got a good look at some of the trailers coming out for the upcoming Kingdom Hearts II, I noticed a bunch of characters I’d never seen before. Doing some checking around on the ‘net, I found out that Kingdom Hearts: Chain of Memories, is a direct sequel (plot-wise, if not game-wise) to the original Kingdom Hearts, and that Kingdom Hearts II takes place directly after the events of Chain of Memories, meaning that if you HAVEN’T played Chain of Memories, there’s going to be some initial confusion as new characters (Like the red, spikey haired adversary Axel) start popping up at the start of Kingdom Hearts II, and it’s obvious Sora knows these people even if you don’t. Once they start referencing events in Chain of Memories, you’re more or less left scratching your head and wondering, “Huh? What’d I miss?” unless you go and read up a FAQ with spoilers for Chain of Memories to get yourself up to speed. Myself, I’m just incredibly nitpicky, and want to see the story for myself. So even though I’m actually not completely thrilled with the direction they took for the portable version of Kingdom Hearts, the story itself is still as engaging as it was in the original console version. Just, y’know, without Haley Joel Osmett, the Tokyo Symphony Orchestra, or real time polygonal graphics.

Anyway, I’ve still got a dialogue and structure test to finish. I more or less figured out now what I’m going to write about. Now it’s just a struggle to get it all to fit–or more precisely, connect–in a non-linear fashion, but still feel linear. Ack…

Tomorrow’s Grindstone

Well, not really.

After a fairly productive day at the office, and by that I mean, I scoured the internet and then wrote a news article about how Jack Thompson has appealed to Bono’s Christian nature to not invest in Take-Two (publishers of Grand Theft Auto) and then wrote about how an informal Hooker’s Union in California (dubbed Sex Workers Outreach Program) is decrying Grand Theft Auto itself for its inhumane treatment of prostitutes (Though personally I derive more satisfaction from sitting on a roof top in the business distract at lunch hour with a sniper’s rifle and giving all the suits a free new pie hole…) I did more work on my upcoming The Movies masterpiece.

I also wrote back to Bioware last night, and in a matter of an hour or so, promptly got a reply back. So it looks like I now have homework for the next few days as they’ve said they’d like to see my submission by the weekend.

Ack.

Okay, so now I gotta’ the write it, except that I’ve already been given the directive that what they’re really looking for here is a good story, some original characters with distinct dialogue, and, of course, the ability to do this for the kind of branching system you find in most American RPGs.

I’m actually toying with something involving cosmic pregnancy and whether the world deserves to exist, but, ah hell, lemme’ just go and write the damn thing…

A Nibble

I strolled into the office today to play more games, and upon checking my e-mail, I noticed I got one from someone who was not spamming me. I didn’t recognize the name of the sender, but the subject heading caught my attention, reading “Hello from BioWare.”

For anyone that doesn’t follow either the games industry or my own incredibly boring life, BioWare is a game company that specializes in role playing games for the PC and game consoles. They make some pretty good games, and I’ve played and enjoyed a few of them over the years. They also happen to be based in my hometown, Edmonton. A few weeks ago, the Wife pointed out that they had an ad on their website saying that they were looking for a writer. I figured it was one of those “Aw hell, I’ve got nothing better to do,” type scenarios and looked it over for their submission requirements, found that I did not have the Neverwinter Nights toolset they asked the submissions to be formatted with, and so promptly sent them an alternative in film script format.

That, I figured, would be the end of that, and if anyone ever asked me how come I never tried to work in the games industry when I love video games so much, I’d be able to tell them I tried and promptly got shot down.

Except that I haven’t been. Not right away, anyhow.

Much to my surprise, the e-mail I got was asking me if I’d be interested in undergoing a “test.” After reading my submission, BioWare is kind of interested, and they want to know if I’m game for an evaluation of my non-linear dialogue and plotting skills. They say the test takes about 2-3 days for most candidates to finish.

I’m kind of caught off guard by this since I was expecting it to go nowhere, and honestly, I’m still not sure I’m all that hot on going back to Edmonton if this thing were to get that far. But it would be an opportunity to actually write for games, something I’ve been bitching about for years about how I’d do this or that compared to what other writers have done with their games, I’m really not sure how to take all this.

Oh well, I guess I’d better stop thinking about what ifs and just concentrate on whatever it is they give me and see how I do for this little test.

At the very least, I’m glad they actually read it. For a while there I was thinking that they wouldn’t even give it a glance because it wasn’t in their preferred format, but I guess they actually do read all submissions after all…

And yeah, I know it’s Valentine’s Day, but the Wife and I are incredibly uncool, so we didn’t have dinner at a restaurant capped off with a night at some hotel the way the other 3.4 million people on the island are…

For All You Burgeoning Directors Out There…

It’s kind of amazing that I’m actually getting paid to play this.

The game is called The Movies and it’s actually two games in one. The first is a fun simulation in the tradition of The Sims and Theme Park where you control the rise of a movie studio from its formation in the 20′s to the modern era. Over the years, you’ll be privy to the advances in cinematic presentation like sound, color, crane shots, CG and others. It’s an interesting, though challenging past time and takes many, many hours to complete. However, the second and far more fun component of the game is a machinima maker.

Machinima, if you’re not familiar with it, is the term that is “Machine” and “Cinema” crunched together. It’s the name applied to amateur productions that people create using the in-game graphics engines of existing games, like Red versus Blue, the now legendary comic trials and tribulations of two opposing forces fighting each other pointlessly in Halo, or the ever increasing short films people make about their Sims in the game of the same name. The Movies more or less gives people an entire studio to play with, complete with simple modeling engines to create performers, a variety of sets, the ability to control time of day and weather, and a huge series of costumes. From there, you pick your sets, drop in your actors, and choose from a large list of possible actions, then edit it all together into a film.

I’m currently picking up the basics of this miniature film school and learning to make my own movies. I’ll explain why in a week or two. Suffice to say, if you’re the creative type, have the money to burn, and a fairly up to date PC in terms of technology, you might want to get this game. It definitely sucks up the hours…

Good Old Fashioned New(ish) Anime

I’m watching this again. In short spurts, a few episodes at a time, in between when I should be writing or playing other things, but for some reason, I just felt compelled to sit down and give this another watch.

I’m talking about Mobile Suit Gundam Seed.

It all gets a bit confusing unless you were following the intricacies of anime from its relatively simpler beginnings in the late 70′s before it took off into the much bigger cult status of the 80′s and the more mainstream acceptance it enjoys today, but it all started with the original Mobile Suit Gundam back in 1979. That was the grand daddy of all giant robot anime, or at least, the grand daddy of giant robot anime in which said giant robots were actually just vehicles of war, like tanks, or planes, as opposed to giant, sentient, mechanized samurai that fought for honor. It was a landmark in Japanese anime in that it attempted to do a “realistic” story about space and giant robots, trying to come up with rationales to explain everything. For example, the giant robot itself was justified by the invention of something called a Minovski Particle. In the context of the series, this was a special kind of particle that scrambled electromagnetic waves like radar, and thus rendered long distance, guided “smart weapons” like nuclear missiles useless. Suddenly combat went back to the WWII days where everything was either line of sight, or done by calculation. As a result, the Mobile Suit, which started its life originally as a general, all purpose construction/loader vehicle for space colonies, was weaponized.

Mobile Suit Gundam Seed is sort of a remake of the original 1979 series in that many of the same themes are touched upon. There is a rebellion fomenting amongst the space colonies that have long been abused by Earth. There is an evolutionary leap as a new type of human has been slowly appearing, cause panic and outrage in the old type or “Naturals”. And of course, there is angst, self doubt, sacrifice, angst and more angst.

And, lest I forget, there are huge freakin’ robots attacking each other with laser swords while shooting around at mach 12.

Now if that ain’t cool, I dunno what it is…

How ‘Bout That Alan Moore

I am once again reminded of why the guy is a genius.

I know it’s been out for a little while, but I myself only got around to picking up this compilation of DC comics written by the man that changed comics.

It’s called DC Universe: The Stories of Alan Moore.

In it lie a few full on issues and a few shorts done by Moore over the years when he and DC were still friends, or more to the point, when he still respected them as the guys that entertained him with Batman and the Justice League rather than as a large corporate entity that dragged his creative impulses through the mud and profited from it.

Reading once again brought home Moore’s two greatest strengths, things that it is easy to say, but more difficult to cultivate. First, he’s a bloody, bloody clever writer. His ideas are just GOOD and original, such as the really fun short, Mogo Doesn’t Socialize about one of the less amiable members of the Green Lantern Corps. But then there’s the other quality, which is that he’s incredibly audacious. Where most people would come up with an idea and go “Nah, that’s too much,” he’ll just pick it up and start running. The perfect example of this is the fact that they included the now out of print The Killing Joke, originally a Prestige Format release by DC in which they let Alan Moore do the unthinkable; he proposed that since the Joker was a violent psychopath, it was time to take the gloves off and let him start acting like one, as in violently and psychotically, rather than simply be a bad guy with clown make up but a clear sense of ethics. The result was one of the more shocking events of the 80′s, particularly if you were a Batgirl fan, but I won’t go into it here.

Another very strong story is Whatever Happened To The Man Of Tomorrow, which was one of the final issues of the traditional “silver age” Superman that was done before John Byrne did his ret/con in the wake of the Crisis On Infinite Earths maxi-series. Here once again, Moore proves that with a good idea and a willingness to go where no one else will, you can do what most people claim is impossible these days, and tell a compelling story about Superman. Remember, this was Superman at the height of his powers, before John Byrne’s de-powering of the man. He was still capable of time-travel, pushing planets and was for all intents and purposes a god. Moore makes him very vulnerable and very human. And it’s so painfully obvious how he did it once you read the story you wonder why more people don’t take this tack. Of course, if you were to do it now, you’d merely be aping Moore, but oh well…

Suffice to say, MAN… That bastard can WRITE…

Another Working Friday

For the most part Friday was spent with me quietly writing articles and thinking one was finished, until I checked in and found out that the cover article for this month’s GameAxis is supposed to be 4 pages, not the 1 page I’d written. So there was a bit of a minor scramble to get all the material together to write that. At least now it’s nearly finished, and it looks like I’ll still be able to get the extra review was assigned done on time. It’s always easier to write a review about a game that’s not so great anyway, since you’ve got lots more to talk about.

Other than that, I took some time to rewatch Gundam Seed which, it occurs to me, I should talk about in depth later, since I really like anime quite a bit, but have yet to go in depth about it.

Also met up with the Wife’s co-worker and we all had a nice dinner at a Spanish restaurant in Siglap, which, I will once again reiterate, is supposed to be the Bohemian section of town, except that I never see any Bohemians there except for the Wife and I. The rest of the people there seem to be the usual business managerial or wage slave types who go down desperately wanting to be creative, artsey bohemians and so they lounge around pretending to be such. Oh well…

Kingdom Hearts II: Getting Closer!

Whoo! Straight from Square-Enix themselves! It’s coming March 28th, and dig this press release!

“The all-star ensemble voice cast is led by Haley Joel Osment (‘The Sixth Sense,’ ‘A.I. Artificial Intelligence’) as the main character Sora and is joined by David Gallagher (’7th Heaven’) as Riku, and Hayden Panettiere (‘Racing Stripes,’ ‘Raising Helen’) as Kairi. Kingdom Hearts II will also feature the voice talents of Jesse McCartney (‘Summerland,’ Recording artist, ‘Beautiful Soul’ CD) as the mysterious boy Roxas, Brittany Snow (‘The Pacifier,’ ‘American Dreams’) as Namine, Christopher Lee (‘Charlie and the Chocolate Factory,’ ‘Lord of the Rings: The Fellowship of the Ring’) as Diz; Steve Burton (‘The Last Castle,’ ‘Taken’) as Cloud, Rachael Leigh Cook (‘She’s All That,’ ‘Josie And The Pussycats’) as Tifa and Mena Suvari (‘American Beauty,’ ‘Rumor Has It’) as Aerith, all characters from Final Fantasy VII; and Hedy Buress (‘Boston Common,’ ‘If These Walls Could Talk’), Tara Strong (‘Fairly OddParents: Shadow Showdown,’ ‘Teen Titans’), Gwendoline Yeo (‘Desperate Housewives,’ ’24′) as the popular female-trio Yuna, Rikku, Paine from Final Fantasy X-2. In addition, many of the original Disney film star voice actors are reprising their role for this project, including Ming-Na (‘ER,’ ‘Final Fantasy: The Spirits Within’) as Mulan, James Woods (‘Be Cool’), returning as the villain Hades and Zach Braff (‘Scrubs’) as Chicken Little.”

Kingdom Hearts II features more than 100 Disney characters — including newcomers Chicken Little and Stitch — along with original characters designed by Square Enix’s Tetsuya Nomura. Along with classic locations, the new title takes players into the worlds of Beauty and the Beast, The Lion King, Mulan, Pirates of the Caribbean, Steamboat Willie and — yes — Tron.

I have just two words:

GO, AURON!